Pixelate an image

Pixelation splits the picture into a grid of square blocks and fills each one with the average colour of the pixels it covers. Nothing is smudged: the edge between two blocks stays hard, which is what gives the mosaic, 8-bit look. Blur, by contrast, softens gradually and keeps shapes smooth, so the two suit different jobs even though both remove detail.

The slider is a percentage, not a pixel count, and under it the tool shows what that means for the selected image in pixels. At 100% a block is 8% of the image's longer side, so a 4000 px wide photo gets blocks of about 320 px, and no block is ever smaller than 2 px. Low settings add a subtle texture, the middle range gives a clear retro mosaic, and the top end leaves a handful of colour tiles.

For a pixel art look, start from a picture with one clear subject and strong colours. Busy scenes turn to noise quickly, so a tightly framed face or object works far better than a wide landscape; crop first if you need to. Save the result as PNG to keep every block edge crisp, as JPG compression can leave faint smudges along them. Transparent areas stay transparent in PNG and WebP.

This page pixelates the whole image. To pixelate one part, such as a face in a crowd or a car's number plate, draw a box over it in the redaction tool and pick Pixelate, or let the face blur tool find faces for you. Bear in mind that each block still holds the average colour of whatever was under it, which is why pixelated text with small blocks can sometimes be guessed back.